At length to life, they need not be the same!
Fancy “improved” them from real freaks, born,
Living, if lives scarce human, and forlorn.
From instinct creative, but cross-grained, Earth
Brought monsters—aspect and limbs strange—to birth;
Abnormal the whole—some with parts too few,
Some with more, though all human, than were due.
Horse-men, mermaids, dragons, gold-streams, gemmed trees.
For Nature are impossibilities.
Had they once existed, there is no cause